On January 4th local time, the Brazilian Ministry of Economy released trade statistics, showing that Brazil’s trade surplus in 2020 reached 50.23 billion US dollars, an increase of 4.6% over 2019.
Total exports for the whole year were $206.97 billion, down 5.9% year-on-year, and total imports were $155.73 billion, a year-on-year decrease of 9%.
Brazil’s trade surplus reached an all-time high of 66.98 billion US dollars in 2017, and then fell for two consecutive years in 2018 and 2019. In 2020, due to the impact of the country’s consumer market by the COVID-19 epidemic, the demand for foreign imports decreased.
In addition, financial analysts said that the dollar appreciated by about 30% against the Brazilian currency real in 2020, making Brazilian exports more profitable but more expensive.
The above factors have caused the decline in Brazil’s imports in 2020 to be greater than the decline in export value, further expanding the trade surplus.
